Lucas: Remembered

By Adam Lucas

CHARLOTTE— Jae'Lyn Withers is going to remember this for the rest of his life.

You know he will. Long after you have forgotten the exact sequence at the end of Carolina's 74-71 loss to Duke, he'll still be picturing it. He'll see the scoreboard, with the Heels trailing the Devils by one point, and he'll feel himself inexplicably moving into the lane, and he'll hear the whistle blow, and he'll relive what must have been awful seconds when everyone in the Spectrum Center slowly came to the realization that his violation had wiped away the game-tying free throw by Ven-Allen Lubin.

It would be great to put your arm around and tell him that he will forget about this eventually. But he won't, and he knows it.

Jae'Lyn Withers is going to remember this for the rest of his life. He's going to remember the tears coming off the court, yes. But he's also going to remember that on one of the worst nights of his life so far, his head coach stood beside him for his entire postgame interview.

Answering those questions isn't fun under the best of circumstances. The lights are bright and the queries are sometimes repetitive. Reporters come and go into the interview, so there are going to be multiple versions of "What happened on the lane violation?"

It's a very, very lonely place to stand when you just made a huge mistake in front of millions of people.

But it's not lonely if your head coach volunteers to stand next to you. Davis also had to do the podium interview, where reporters direct questions specifically to one or two key players and the head coach. He wanted to make sure he was also there for Withers, who didn't go to the podium and instead would do his interviews in more of a one-on-group, eye-to-eye format.

One of the least understood aspects of Davis's personality is that he does not enjoy these settings. There are some coaches who thrive when the cameras are on; John Calipari comes to mind, or someone like Bruce Pearl. Talking is like breathing for them.

The great paradox with Davis, who formerly worked in the media, is that he regularly needs silence and reflection to recharge. "In this job, you're around people all the time," Davis said on a recent Checking In segment. "People think I'm an extrovert and that I draw fuel from being around people. I'm the exact opposite. It drains me. I get fuel being by myself, collecting my thoughts, and being around my family."

Even in the minutes before Carolina practices, you can sometimes find him pacing alone on the opposite end of the court, taking a few precious seconds to collect his thoughts. In the time before a game, when the team isn't in the locker room, he's sitting quietly alone, almost relishing the one part of his day when the phone isn't ringing and the texts aren't pinging. In the immediate aftermath of a game, when the adrenaline is only starting to wane but people are milling around everywhere, he takes a couple minutes to himself.

Neither the Davis approach nor the Calipari approach is "right." It's just part of their personalities. And on Friday night, Carolina's head coach chose to make that part of his personality secondary to Withers' needs. He didn't have to. Davis was going to have his own meeting with the media. And he certainly didn't tell Withers to step into the lane, so he didn't have the answers the media wanted.

But he stood there.

I know I'm getting old because sometimes everything that plays out in college sports is more relevant to me through the lens of what the parents of the players must think. I used to imagine myself being a player, shooting baskets in the driveway and pretending to be Kenny Smith. Now it's more imagining how a parent might feel when their kid has a bad shooting day, or suffers an injury, or makes a critical mistake. Life is like that. It was a lot easier to know everything when I didn't know anything.

Seeing Davis stand there, well, it's what you would want for your kid. You'd want them to stand up and answer the questions—as Withers did—but you'd also want a mentor right there beside them to remind them, as Davis did, "We wouldn't be here without J. Wit." In the last couple of decades, I'm not sure I have ever seen anything like it in an interview setting. It's not just about today. One day Jae'Lyn Withers is going to have kids, and he'll remember that one day not too long ago someone encouraged him to stand up even when it hurt...but also stood beside him.

None of this changes the outcome of the game. Carolina lost to Duke for the third straight time. A furious comeback fell short. Mental errors in the first half and second half played a big part in the loss. If the Tar Heels are fortunate enough to participate in the NCAA Tournament, they'll have to play better—and more consistently—in order to earn more than one game. They played 30 very good minutes against Duke in Chapel Hill and eight very good minutes against Duke in Charlotte, and the fact that they're still on a quest for 40 very good minutes in mid-March after first suffering the problem in November is a substantial reason why their postseason fate now rests in the hands of a committee.

It's a frustrating place to be, especially under the circumstances. No one feels worse about it than Withers, who found his head coach choosing to stand beside him in a difficult situation. And if Davis had been in the same spot 35 years ago, he likely would have heard Dean Smith make his famous recommendations about what to do with a mistake:

Recognize it.

Admit it.

Learn from it.

Forget it.

And so, on Smith's advice, the mistake might eventually--not today, not tomorrow, not next month, but eventually--be forgotten. What happened after the mistake, though? That's going to be remembered.

Players Mentioned

Ven-Allen Lubin

Jae'Lyn Withers

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